Marketing and Advertising for Small Businesses

It’s not easy being a small business owner in the 21st century. Large corporations are present in nearly every small American town, often offering lower deals than a small business owner could even imagine. However, small businesses still have shot — not only of surviving, but a shot at being incredibly successful in this cut-throat world. By utilizing the most recent methods of advertising, such as social media outlets, combined with the tried and true traditional advertising methods, small businesses can cater their marketing plans to suit their needs, their clients and their budgets. This will give them a greater presence in the community, while subsequently growing their small business into a success.

Utilize Social Media
One of the best ways for small businesses to advertise their services and shops right now is to utilize the many benefits of social media. All small businesses should have a Facebook page where they can connect with their customers, offering them insight onto the latest happenings with your business — including sales, promotions and the hot new products you have available or a great new service you are offering. Customers are shown to enjoy connecting with their favorite local businesses online, because it is a quick reminder to them about the latest sales and specials. One of the biggest benefits of social media is that the accounts are free — be it a Facebook or a Twitter account, your small business literally cannot afford not to have a presence in the social media world that is dominating today’s society like nothing else.

Take Advantage of Shop Local Campaigns
While corporate stores and global companies dominate the business world today, there has certainly been a movement by much of the American public to get back to basics and begin shopping local again. In the midst of economic hardship, Americans have learned that the important thing is to keep the local economy moving. Small businesses should take advantage of shop local campaigns, and promote their businesses within those campaigns. Be sure to offer specials and deals on Small Business Saturday — which now takes place every year during the busiest shopping weekend, the weekend following Thanksgiving and the kick-off to the Christmas shopping season. Customers who are interested in finding out more about the local shops in their town will easily be able to find, locate and subsequently shop at your store or utilize your services. It’s a great way to connect with the local people in your town who care about their local economy.

Include Offers in Traditional Ads
While there are plenty of ways to advertise in the digital realm, small businesses today shouldn’t ignore the staying power of traditional advertising methods. Consider taking out advertising space in local newspapers, magazines and other print publications, and in addition, advertise online as well. The best way for small businesses to have successful traditional advertising campaigns is to include offers within the advertisement itself. Draw people into your store with a great deal or special on a product that they can get at a larger store, but not at this great price. This is an easy way to get a response from potential customers, and bring them into your brick and mortar location. Once they are there, they will likely spend some time looking at your other products and services which will most likely bring in even more revenue than you originally anticipated.

Trim Your Ads
While it is important to run advertising and marketing campaigns in local print publications and on local websites, it is not always the size of the advertisement that matters in the end. Often, repetition and the number of times a customer sees your ad is more effective and important when it comes to a successful small business advertising campaign. Instead of purchasing one or two large ads that will only run once, consider purchasing a smaller ad space but having that same advertisement run multiple times. Customers will continue to see your advertisement on a weekly or daily basis, which is more likely to keep you and your business at the forefront of their minds. The more they see the ad, the more likely they will be to stop by and check out that great offer you have been promoting for several weeks.

Network with Other Small Businesses
Another way to have a successful advertising campaign as a small business is to team up with the other small business owners in your area. Consider running a joint deal, or a special sales day on your block, so that customers can get the most out of their time and money when they head to your shop downtown. If you are a florist, consider running a deal with the local bakery — perhaps a Valentine’s Day special where guys can get their special ladies a great treat and a beautiful bouquet for one low price. If there are several local businesses in your area, consider holding a special sales day — perhaps one Saturday a month all the businesses could run a 30 percent off coupon, or hold special sales and deals throughout the day. Customers are more likely to come visit when they can take care of several things at once.

Reward Returning Customers
Your returning customers and regulars are your most valuable asset as a small business. Consider sending them the latest promotions a bit earlier than the rest of the public will receive them, perhaps by starting up an e-mail list. Another way to reward existing customers is to offer promotional cards that reward frequent buyers. If you are a local coffee shop, offer customers a free card where they can buy ten drinks and get the 11th drink free. This will keep them returning in order to reap their rewards, and also benefits them as a regular customer. Regular customers are the ones who will be passing along recommendations for your business by word of mouth, so it is important to take care of them and offer them the excellent customer service that they deserve.

Running a small business might be one of the hardest jobs in the world, but it can also be one of the most rewarding. Business owners need to know how to get the biggest bang for their advertising dollars, and also need to know how to locate their target customers. By utilizing more modern methods of advertising without forgetting the importance of traditional methods, small business owners will be far more likely to have successful advertising campaigns. These campaigns will ensure that they get to continue to do what they love for many years to come.

Successful Marketing for your Online Business

When you are building an online business, use several methods of advertising to successfully market your business to people who are likely to be interested in it. Effective advertising contains content that is relevant, showcases your business’s best products and services, and presents an offer for the potential customer to act on right away. Use a combination of methods to get your name out, get previous customers to return for additional purchases, and convert new leads into customers.

Targeted Advertisements
Rather than focusing your marketing on general advertisements, use the targeted advertising systems on websites like Facebook and Google to reach customers who are most likely to buy your services or products. When you create an advertisement, the system allows you to select some key words or demographic features that will define who sees the advertisements. For example, on Facebook, you can target advertisements to people of a specific age, gender, location, or who have a particular interest listed on their profile. Google’s targeted advertisements are largely based on what a person searches for or what key words are in emails they send or receive. Because these advertisements are significantly more likely than regular ads to be seen by people who are interested, they are an effective way to generate business. People can click right over to your online business and buy something right away if they are interested.

Social Media Presence
Create a profile for your business on each of the major social media outlets. In particular, you should have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. On your Facebook page, post photos and videos to help potential customers get a better feel for what your business offers. Also include special coupons that people can only access if they “Like” your business page. Interact regularly by posting updates on your business page’s wall and responding to comments and questions that other Facebook users post to the wall. Use your Twitter account to distribute quick updates about specials to your followers. If they retweet these updates, their followers will see them as well, which can quickly get out news to people who have never heard of your business before.

Email Newsletters
One of the perks of an online business is that people are always just a few clicks away from buying your products. Draw your business to people’s attention regularly by sending out email newsletters with information about sales, new products or services, and useful information about using your products or services. Build a mailing list for your newsletter by gathering email addresses for past customers, including an area on your website where visitors can sign up for your newsletter and by purchasing leads from reputable sources. In each newsletter, include easy links to purchase featured products or services on your website. If you can get people to click through to your website at some point while reading the newsletter, they are likely to browse and may make a purchase.

Search Engine Optimization
When your website shows up in search results from search engines, this is effectively free advertising to highly interested individuals. Therefore, when building your website, focus some of your attention on search engine optimization. This is the practice of using keyword phrases in your website copy, headers, web addresses and page titles to make it more likely that the pages will show up in search results that use those keywords. Having other websites link to yours also increases its search rankings. If you have no experience in search engine optimization, hire a service to help set up your website to get as much traffic as possible.

Regular Blog Updates
Write a blog on your business’s website and update it regularly with posts that are relevant to the people who make up your primary client base. Rather than writing about your products in a promotional fashion, just write posts that provide valuable information that is of general interest to people who would buy your products or services. Of course, when it comes up naturally, you can mention products and services, but you should focus mainly on writing useful content. This will help your business website to show up more regularly in search results, get links from other blogs and to get return traffic from people who bookmark the blog and read it on a regular basis.

Sponsored Blog Posts
Most people read at least one or two blogs on a regular basis, and they usually trust the opinions of the blogger and are willing to take recommendations from the blogger. Therefore, one highly effective way to market your business is to have a blogger mention it in a post. Contact bloggers who write about topics related to the products and services you sell, or who you expect have readers who would be interested in your product, and ask them to write a sponsored post. This is one in which you provide the blogger with a free product or service, and in return, the blogger reviews it in a post dedicated solely to your business. The blogger also links to your online business so the readers can buy from you if the review gets them interested.

Business Cards
Even though your business is online, you should not neglect regular print-based business cards, which are still a highly effective way to get the word out about your business. In addition to carrying some with you at all time to give to anyone you meet who expresses an interest in your business, you should also give business cards to customers who buy from you. If you sell items that you ship to people, include a business card in each order so the person has a visual reminder of your business to find you again next time. You can even include an extra card so the person has another to pass along to a friend. Business cards can also help encourage word-of-mouth advertising that occurs when you or someone else gives your business card away.

The Greatest Gift to Give Your Customers

Love, peace, life, knowledge, spirituality…what great gift shepherds prospects to the customers lounge and customers to the client list? Sincere interest in their lives, acknowledgement that their business is a way to provide for their families, and occasionally reminding them to honor this priority, connects you to them.

Important moments, milestones, symbolize the celebration of family progress:

1. Birthdates,
2. Anniversaries,
3. Graduations,
4. Religious events

Sometimes these important dates slip the minds of busy people. When part of your marketing effort targets these important events and anniversaries, gratitude repays the cost of implementing this program.

People love talking, even bragging, about their spouse and children. Accept the opportunity to ask about a personal picture on the desk or wall of their office. Point at the photo and make some acknowledging and validating remark like: “Your family enjoys ski vacations?” or “I see your son plays baseball.” Notice wedding rings, “greatest parent” coffee mugs, clumsily formed clay ashtrays, or paraphernalia that suggest hobbies, sports, or other interests.

Don’t seem interested in these things, be interested. Jot down notes when manners permit. What is the kid’s jersey number? What team and sport? Hobbies, ages, anything the client wants to tell you is important. Write it down.

You’re in marketing. Ask the open ended questions; draw out the details. Find common ground, like your eight-year-old son/daughter plays rugby too. Perhaps a niece or nephew share the interest or is a similar age. If you do not have family, express that as regret, that you would enjoy having a ten-year-old son who guest conducted the Boston Pops. It’s important to have the conversation and remember the finer details.

Exact dates, school grades, specific religions, years married, or any personal data is important, in finer detail is best, but knowing the client has a son and daughter, aged 11 and 14, both born in June is very useful.

Once you have mined the personal data to the extent their patience or time allows, segue into your pitch with a statement reminding your audience that family or our life’s interests are why we work, so let’s talk about your product/service and how it will create more time or money for their wonderful …you get the picture.

Create a database including all names, important dates, past gifts, hobbies, interests, or any other data for each company and their personnel. You want a happy client? Make sure they’re aware of their assistant’s birthdays, anniversaries, time of service or any other relevant data, and remind the client on a timely basis.

Email eases the burden of sending information to your contact list. Create groups such as:

• Parents of high school aged kids
• Parents of Little Leaguers
• Soccer enthusiasts
• College affiliations
• Professional affiliations
• Any subgroup with common interests

When you come across articles, news releases, grant proposals, alumni news, or any information that is relevant and interesting, send a copy to that affiliation group. If you set aside twenty hours a week for marketing, this activity should be budgeted for three hours.

Create affiliation groups for birthdates, anniversaries, graduation dates, time of service dates, time as a client dates, by month. Set a date around the twentieth of the month prior to write a note and gift suggestion from your products or services if appropriate. Schedule the email release for two weeks before the event date.

Send an e-card or greeting card to the family member two weeks prior to the event date. Contact software is available for this data management, or calendar software is included in most e-mail managers.

Expand the number of positive contacts by sending thank you messages or cards for quick payment of invoices. For example, if your payment terms are net 30 days, why not discount 2% off the next order for payments received within fifteen days? That’s a sincere and meaningful thank you.

Have cards or gifts ready for clients who refer business to you. Perhaps a thank you card that offers 2% of the referred business as a discount on the next order.

Referrals, word of mouth advertising, are gold for marketing departments. Make sure you provide your clients with referrals that help their business. Use a special communication for this service rather than a phone call. Develop a data sheet for referrals that looks like gift certificate and email it. The gift of a new customer: name, address, phone, email.

Your client or their family will receive a dozen or so contacts per year this way. And, your client receives the reminders, a thoughtful and inexpensive gift for the busy executive.

This is a very powerful marketing idea when executed properly. Once you are an indispensible member of the inner circle, you have a client for life. Sincere caring and engaging in their lives demonstrates stability and value in yours.

Marketing, Market Branding & Market Promotion in 2012

In 2010, we were close. In 2011, we were on the precipice. Get ready for 2012 because we have hit critical mass, and how we market, approach market branding and conduct market promotion has changed forever. We can’t ever go back and as consumers, we don’t want to go back.

What’s different? Broad access to product information; instant consumer reviews; active conversations in social networks; algorithms that track your buying habits and interests; ease of online transactions; and, finally, fears of buying online have evaporated. These impacts not only affect businesses who market online. In fact, the greatest impact may be on local (offline) businesses who will have to market online to get and keep local customers.

Marketing 2012. To use a search engine term, the key to marketing anything in the future is relevance. With 7 billion unique individuals on the planet, categories and niches within categories won’t cut it. Drilling your product down to micro and even sub-micro niches to be relevant will rule.

Market Branding 2012. Brand, whether it be your product or your image, is going to be all about managing the conversation in the virtual marketplace. This will make or break you and will be especially critical to local businesses.

Market Promotion 2012.  Think spider web and interlinking to promote your product or business in 2012. The bigger you spin your spider web, making it sticky and using interlinking methods and networks to drive traffic, will capture and keep customers.

3 Simple (and often overlooked) Ways to Stay Connected With Your Customers

Creating solid customer relations and providing an excellent product or service isn’t always enough to maintain customer loyalty. To convert potential or one-time customers into repeat business it’s important to maintain a connection that leads customers to think of your business the next time they require your product or service. Marketing your business doesn’t have to be expensive or confusing. These simple strategies can be utilized to keep your small business in the forefront of the customers’ minds.

1)    Email Marketing

The use of email newsletter templates provides the small business owner with an inexpensive way to create professional-looking email newsletters. In addition to maintaining a database of customers, these email marketing programs provide you with flexibility and user-friendly templates that allow you to include coupons, business updates and informative articles related to your business.

2)    Social Media

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are a few of the social media venues that provide quick, simple connections between businesses and customers. The creation of a Facebook fan page for your business can expand your exposure beyond your city or state, drawing customers from around the world. Use these venues to inform and attract customers with a micro-version of the type of information you provide in your email marketing campaign.

3)    The Old-Fashioned Way

Not every customer has a Facebook account or checks email regularly. Overlooking customers who aren’t reachable via technology can translate into a loss of business. Printed flyers and newsletters, as well as a short personal note to existing customers keeps you connected while offering a personal touch that leads many customers to remain loyal to your business, instead of the competition.

How well does your business use these three marketing methods in your business? How do you measure their effectiveness?

5 Marketing Titles to Put the Profit In Your Business

How profitable is your marketing? Are you connecting with customers through your message or are you wasting resources in hopes of making that connection. Marketing isn’t easy and can be a money pit in your business if you aren’t doing it correctly. Here’s a look at 5 outstanding marketing books that you can use to grow your business.

•    Cutting Edge Advertising by Jim Aitchison- This book, a classic first published in 1999, has been able to stay relevant despite all the changes to marketing and advertising over the last decade because it offers timeless truths, including how advertising works, how brand-building methodologies are changing, how to get an idea for your advertising, and how copy and art should be crafted. It also includes advice from many advertising masters from the United States, United Kingdom and Asia.

•    Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch- If you want a guidebook to marketing your small business, you won’t find a more comprehensive one than Duct Tape Marketing. This book focuses on the marketing needs of the small and medium sized businesses, businesses that can’t afford to spend an arm and a leg in their advertising but still want to come out ahead.

•   The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Reis and Jack Trout- Al Reis and Jack Trout have written a number of books on this topic and each is a must read for the business owner or marketer, but The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing is their most valuable in my opinion. In this book the pair of authors offers valuable insights that are timeless and offer you a clear path to take to ensure your success.

•   Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends and Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin- It’s important that businesses shape their message so consumers willingly accept it. Typically, traditional advertising is based on the hope of taking our attention away from whatever we are doing. Godin call this Interruption Marketing and it no longer works. On the other hand, Permission Marketing offers consumers incentives to accept advertising voluntarily and enables companies to develop long-term relationships with customers, create trust, build brand awareness — and greatly improve the chances of making a sale.

• Real Time Marketing and PR: How to Instantly Engage your Market, Connect with Customers and Create Products That Grow your Business Now by David Meerman Scott- Marketing shouldn’t be done with a long-term calendar like in the past. Things, ideas and people move fast these days and if you’re not engaging with your target market, you are on your way to marketplace irrelevance. If you want to learn how to create a message that goes viral in the real-time marketplace we live in, this is the book for you. You’ll learn how to develop or refine your products or services instantly, based on feedback from customers or events in the marketplace and make the entire relationship between you and your customers more interactive and more profitable.

When “Sassy” Marketing Goes Wrong

If you want your marketing to work, you have to know who you’re selling to and then focus on that target in presenting your offer and building your copy.

This is Marketing 101, but the marketers at JC Penney seemed to have missed that class.

This fall, as parents everywhere tried to find affordable school clothes for their kids, JC Penney decided to introduce a borderline offensive t-shirt line aimed at girls aged 7-16. The t-shirts had pithy sayings meant to be funny or ironic, but were way off the mark.

Among the sayings on the t-shirt were “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me.”

And the advertisement for that t-shirt online was, “Who has time for homework when there’s a new Justin Bieber album out? She’ll love this tee that’s just as cute and sassy as she is.”

Was that copy aimed at all the mothers and fathers who are buying clothes for their little girls? Because if it was it missed its mark by a mile!

JC Penney was deluged by complaints about the t-shirt line and made the decision to discontinue selling it, but the damage has already been done.

Thousands of people signed an online petition to tell JC Penney to “Stop selling clothing with sexist messages for girls.”

And there is little question that JC Penney lost more than a few customers who were offended.

We’ve all seen ironic t-shirts that say things we might not say in public. In fact, companies like Achtung T Shirt make their profits with these types of shirts. But the difference is that most of these T-Shirts are sold to adults or at least people over the age of 18, not children. And they generally aren’t sold at a family-friendly store like JC Penney.

Reinforcing the attitude that girls are just “cute and sassy” and more interested in Justin Beiber than doing their homework diminishes both girls and women and in the end, may diminish JC Penney’s bottom line.

Is this the message a family-friendly store wants to send to daughters, nieces, sisters and girls everywhere? Would you want your daughter to wear this shirt, no matter how old she is?

Marketing is More than an Elephant Carrying a Sign

In the world of marketing, many different terms get tossed around and when they are, the real meanings can get lost.

For too many people, when they think of marketing, they think strictly of advertising and promoting their business, but marketing means much more than that.

About marketing, Peter Drucker said, “… it is not a specialized activity at all. It encompasses the entire business. It is the whole business seen from the point of view of the final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view… marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.”

There’s a well-known metaphor that makes this idea particularly clear.

The metaphor goes like this, “If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying ‘Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday,’ that’s advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that’s promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor’s flower bed, that’s publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that’s public relations. If the town’s citizens go to the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they’ll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions, and ultimately they spend a lot of money at the circus, that’s sales.”

All of these factors are parts of the marketing of the circus, not just the advertising and promotion.

Is this how you view the marketing of your business or are you more concerned with costly advertising and promotions?

The best marketing strategy for any business is outstanding customer service that leads to happy customers and future referrals. This has nothing to do with what we consider advertising, but there’s no better advertisement for your business than a happy customer who tells their friends about your business.

So when it comes to your marketing strategy, are you looking at it from the final result, your customer’s point of view? Or are you wasting time painting signs and walking an elephant down the street to nowhere?

Does the Power of Your Vision Make You A Leader?

It’s been 100 years since he was born and more than a decade since he died, but David Ogilvy continues to influence the world we live in. Ogilvy was known as “The Father of Advertising” and he pushed the boundaries like no other advertising executive before him.

What Ogilvy did was make advertising interesting. He said, “You cannot bore people into buying your product, you can only interest them in buying it,” and if you look at advertising that came before Ogilvy, you can see that was a groundbreaking notion when Ogilvy came up with it.

But Ogilvy isn’t just an important figure because of the impact he made on advertising, he remains important because of the impact he made as a leader, not only changing the face of the industry he worked in, but leading the change of the society around him.

Much has been written about Ogilvy and he was, depending on what you read, a snob, a perfectionist, rude, impatient and even egotistical. No, Mr. Ogilvy was not a perfect person. But he was, in many ways, a perfect leader.

Ogilvy knew that if your ideas were powerful enough, you must lead, and his ideas were not only powerful, they were groundbreaking. He made advertising smarter, more interesting and something people would talk about at the dinner table.

Along the way he obsessed on details, he was certain about virtually everything and he had a huge ego, but he was also the smartest person in the room (when it came to advertising) and everyone knew it.

The people who worked for him may not have liked him, but they loved him because they respected him, his knowledge and his vision.

What does Ogilvy’s story tell us about what it takes to make a leader? Often leaders aren’t made, instead people become leaders because they are in the best position to lead, whether it’s because they have the most knowledge, passion or attention to detail.

David Ogilvy had all three of those qualities and whether the people that worked for him liked him or not was irrelevant. They trusted his vision and his ability and their commitment showed in the work produced by Ogilvy’s agency over the years.

So if you are in a leadership position, ask yourself, does your team follow you because of your vision and ability, or because you sign the checks?

What Type of Bath Salts Does Your Dad Like?

What can Mother’s Day teach us about marketing? It’s another example of how important seasonal opportunities can be for small businesses, but when we look at some statistics, we can glean even more, if we ask the right questions.

First question, why do we spend so much less on Dad than we do on Mom?

According to recent figures, Americans spent about $16 billion on Mother’s Day but only $11 billion on Father’s Day. On average, Americans spent about $140 on gifts for Mom, but less than $100 on Dad. Maybe the unkindest cut is that, while Mother’s Day is the busiest day in the US for overall telephone calls, Father’s Day sees the highest number of collect calls.

From these numbers it’s easy to see that Mother’s Day can be a big opportunity for many small businesses. People want to spend on their Mum and mothers tend to enjoy more indulgent gifts. I mean, could you picture your Dad lighting candles or using that special gift basket full of bath salts?

Men tend to like practical gifts, things they’d have to buy anyway. If your store wanted to sell to people buying gifts for their dads, you wouldn’t typically sell picture frames, perfume or jewelry, but you would feature things men want, which tend to be “toys” and tools.

Second question, why is this important when it comes to marketing?

When we market we have to understand that not every situation is the same and we have to take advantage of timely opportunities.

The difference between Mother’s and Father’s Day spending is a good example. If you spent the same amount of money marketing in preparation for Mother’s Day as you did for Father’s Day, you shouldn’t have expected the same return on your investment.

Most businesses don’t cater to both sexes and if your marketing budget is the same (whether you’re selling gift baskets or wallets) you aren’t getting the most out of your marketing.

Mother’s Day can teach us to take an active interest in the way we market and look for situations when businesses can grow their bottom line by accentuating seasonal advantages they may have.

You’ve got to understand when the time is right to invest in marketing and when investing in marketing will cost you. A special deal on power tool leading up to Mother’s Day probably won’t be a big seller. If you view each and every day, week, month and season the same way, you won’t be able to take advantage of the opportunities that come.